Never-Before-Seen Photo Suggests That Amelia Earhart May Have Survived Plane Crash In Pacific

Ileana is a writer on the Original Content team. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Amelia Earhart remains an American hero. Born in 1897, she was always adventurous. As a child, she loved playing outside.

At 10 years old, Amelia saw her first aircraft at the Iowa State Fair, but it wasn’t until 1921 that she took her first flying lessons.

By October of 1922, Amelia had set her first world record by flying her yellow biplane, “The Canary,” to 14,000 feet — higher than any other female pilot at the time.

And in 1923, Amelia became the 16th woman to be issued a pilot’s license.

Amelia continued her aviation career throughout the rest of the 1920s — becoming not only the first woman to complete a transatlantic flight, but a competitive flyer, an associate editor at Cosmopolitan magazine, and a spokesperson for flying.

In 1937, Amelia Earhart set out with navigator Fred Noonan to fly around the world. On the final leg of their flight, however, they disappeared.

The photo turned up after extensive searches by former federal investigators in the U.S. National Archives.

Two people in the photo look remarkably like Amelia and Fred. Historians believe that the photo suggests the two of them survived a crash landing in the Marshall Islands, where they were then captured by the Japanese military.

According to the History Channel, forensic analyst Doug Carner said he is 99.7 percent confident that the photo is untouched and authentic, and facial recognition expert Kent Gibson said it’s “likely” that the two people in the photo are indeed Amelia and Fred.

If it is, in fact, the famous duo, it could change history as we know it.